Taliban take responsibilityLAHORE, Pakistan: A teenage suicide bomber blew himself up near a religious procession in the Pakistani city of Lahore uesday, killing atlas 13 people and wounding more than 50, officials said. Militants linked to Al-Qaeda and Taliban have attacked such religious gatherings in the past as part of their bloody campaign to create chaos and topple the United States-backed Pakistani government. “A 13-year-old boy detonated explosives as policemen tried to check him at a cordon near the procession,” Lahore police chief Aslam Tarin told Reuters. Hospital officials said 13 people, including three policemen and a women, were killed and around 52 people were wounded. There was also a blast in the country's biggest city of Karachi after another procession passed through a lower-class neighborhood. Initial reports suggested a bomber on a motorbike struck a police vehicle. Hospital officials said one policeman was killed and two wounded. A group affiliated with the Pakistan Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. “We will continue such attacks in future,” Shakirullah Shakir, a spokesman for Fidayeen-e-Islam militant group told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location. Militants have unleashed a wave of suicide and bomb attacks across Pakistan. The attacks on religious minorities are part of their wider campaign to destabilize Pakistan. A city of eight million near the border with India, Lahore has been increasingly subject to Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked attacks in a nationwide bombing campaign that has killed more than 4,000 people in three-and-a-half years. Triple suicide bombings targeting procession killed at least 31 people and wounded 280 others in Lahore in early September. The violence is often sectarian in nature and blamed on homegrown Taliban militants and other extremist networks.
